This race was significant for me for two reasons. Firstly, I ran it with ChrisH from the RWOL Beginner’s Forum (now known as Doughboy). He's the 85th fellow RWOL/Merv forumite who I have met. Secondly, it was my 200th race since I started running seriously is 1983.

 

Meeting Chris was great! Real-Chris is just as nice as Cyber-Chris. J  He was in Baltimore on business and we got together for dinner last night and to run the race this morning. Since he is a dessert chef, I think one of the things that most impressed Chris was the obscene excessiveness of the desserts served at Vaccaro's....a dessert-only restaurant in Baltimore's Little Italy where we went after dinner last night.  J

 

We had a near perfect morning for a race today. Cool - upper 50's at race time. Crisp - very low humidity. Sunny - overcast is always better for a race, but it's hard to get that along with the dry air we enjoyed. A bit of a breeze, but not enough to be a significant problem.

 

The course was advertised as flat and fast....and it was. It was an out and back course that ran through three historic districts along Baltimore's inner harbor waterfront....Canton, Fells Point and Little Italy. Race direction was provided by a team that has worked together for 20 years, so it was very well organized and went off like clockwork. BTW, the guy who ran the start and finish line for the race director was Bob Ray, who holds the longest current running streak in the world of more than 33+ years. RW did an article on him a couple of years ago.

 

I didn't expect much from this race...and I didn't get much. Although I did a bit better than I thought I would. I've run little for the last 2 months....only 84 miles in the last 6 weeks. This was my first race in more than two months and only my third since March. My conditioning is as poor as it has been for three years. And, I went into this race weighing more (194 pounds) than any of my other 199 previous races. Is that enough pre-race "excuse setting"?  J

 

I didn't really set any goals for this race, but thought I should be able to manage about 38-minutes, or 9:30 pace. Chris said he thought he might run a 7:30 pace, so I told him I would finish about 8 minutes behind him.

 

My race went a little better than I expected. First mile split was 9:13. I knew from how I felt that I was pushing it just a bit so I eased a little the second mile to 9:22., although I thought I had backed off more than that. The only slight grade on the course came in mile 3. Very gentle uphill for about ¼ mile, then a turnaround and glide back down. From there on to the finish, it was dead flat. My mile 3 split was 9:18.

 

At that point, I had my sights set on a guy who was about 100 yards ahead of me and who I had been closing on. I came alongside him with about ¾ mile to go and noticed that he looked about my age. I said, "Let's go man. Take me home!" He replied, "Hey! We're getting too old for this stuff." I said, "The hell we are! Let's go get those two girls in front of us." They were about 200 yards ahead. He picked up his pace and we ran side-by-side for about 1/4 mile. Then he dropped back. I didn't know how far. Meanwhile, we closed half the gap the two girls had on us to about 100 yards. Then the gap stopped closing....the girls had a finishing push, too. With a couple hundred yards to go, the other guy passed me. I didn't have enough left to stay with him. I didn't catch the girls and the guy beat me by a few yards. But, running with him and chasing the girls pulled me to a strong finish. The last mile of 8:43 was my fastest split by 30 seconds. My final time was 36:36.

 

This race provided me a calibration of where I stand today. Weather and course were as good as I could ask for this time of the year, so the only variable was conditioning....and the HUGE dessert last night at Vaccaro's. J It really did provide a good opportunity to assess where I am....which is far behind this time the last three years. My pace today was almost a minute/mile slower than last year. In fact, it was about 7 sec/mile slower than I ran the Philly Marathon two years ago.

 

Oh, I did take third place in my age bracket. But, that is more of a testament to the relatively small field than my race. There were four races in the Baltimore area today, so competitors were widely dispersed.

 

I predicted that Chris would run the race 8 minutes faster than I....he ran 28:00, I ran 36:36. Can I predict a race or what???  J

 

Jim2

 

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